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The Truth about Trying

Before you and your partner start treatment for infertility, you need to establish how far you are willing to go. Do you want medicine and surgery? Or just one or the other? You may change your mind later down the road but it is good to know where to draw the line. The cost for fertility treatment can cost a lot, and most of the time insurance companies do not cover it. This is where Mavericks Miracle Babies comes in; we help families afford the treatments needed to have a child of their own. The idea of Maverick’s Miracle Babies Foundation came about after the founders, Tim and Kelsey Edwards, struggled with infertility. After achieving success with an IUI and discovering how common infertility is among couples, they decided to take action to make sure that financial standing would not defeat those with the same fertility problems.

Types of treatment for Women:

Treatments for fertility problems in women depend on what may be keeping the woman from getting pregnant.

Problems with Ovulating Treatment may include taking medicine such as Clomiphene and Metformin

Unexplained Fertility Treatment may include Clomiphene, Hormone Injections and Insemination

Blocked or Damaged Tubes If your fallopian tubes are blocked, treatment may include tubal surgery. If Endometriosis seems to be the main reason for infertility treatment may include laparoscopic surgery to remove endometrial tissue growth.

Types of treatment for Men:

Insemination

When previous treatments don’t work:

In vitro fertilization (IVF)

Intrauterine insemination (IUI)

Maverick’s Miracle Babies Foundation, Inc. is proudly founded in Austin, TX. The Maverick’s Miracle Babies Procreation Grants are made up of public donations and are awarded 4 times a year to qualifying local Texas families. Procreation Grants are up to $20,000 and are to be used for medical costs surrounding IUI and IVF procedures.

The intake interview If initial fertility treatments such as fertility drugs or surgery fail and you decide to move forward with IVF, your ob/gyn will refer you to a reproductive endocrinologist. During your initial meeting with the doctor, you’ll discuss your medical and fertility history, and that of your partner, to determine which treatment protocols will work best for you, as well as what you can do to improve the odds of a healthy birth.

Preliminary tests and talksYou’ll undergo ultrasound and blood tests to determine the number and quality of your eggs. You’ll also meet with a nurse to learn how to self administer fertility drugs, a financial counselor to work out payment, and a psychologist to discuss coping with any stress that might arise.

Drugs to induce egg growthTo stimulate your follicles to grow as many eggs as possible during your cycle, for about two weeks you’ll give yourself one to three daily injections of fertility medications (such as GonalF, a folliclestimulating hormone, and Repronex, a luteinizing hormone) in your thigh or stomach. Either before your cycle or midway through, you’ll also inject a gonadotropinreleasing hormone (GnRH) drug such as Lupron, which prevents you from ovulating too early. Around day 12, you’ll inject the drug human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) to stimulate ovulation and precisely time the final burst of egg growth. During these two weeks, you’ll visit the clinic about five times for blood and ultrasound tests to monitor your progress.

Egg HarvestingIn a carefully targeted window of time shortly before doctors calculate that your eggs will be released through the fallopian tubes during ovulation you’ll be heavily sedated and, using ultrasound as a guide, your doctor will pull eggs out of your ovaries with a hollow needle inserted through the wall of the vagina. In the meantime, your partner, in a nearby room, will ejaculate into a cup to obtain sperm, which the lab will then quickly process to extract the most robust ones. The sperm and eggs are then mixed together in an incubator so insemination can occur. If necessary for instance, when sperm count is low or the sperm are having difficulty penetrating the egg the lab embryologist might also perform intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a procedure in which sperm are injected directly into an egg. If you are over 40 or a previous IVF attempt failed, he might also puncture the outer shell of a resulting embryo shortly before transferring it into the uterus so it can implant itself more easily, a process called assisted hatching.

Embryo transferThree days after harvesting your eggs, your doctor will use a thin catheter to insert two or three embryos into your uterus via the vagina. “This is a painless procedure that feels like a Pap smear,” explains Mark Perloe, M.D., medical director at Georgia Reproductive Specialists in Atlanta. If genetic diseases are a concern, this step might occur on day five, after lab biopsies have been performed to select the healthiest embryos.

The outcomeYour partner (or a friend or a family member) will give you daily injections of progesterone, a hormone that aids implantation, in the buttocks. In two weeks, you’ll take a pregnancy test at the clinic; someone there will call to give you the results.